January 2014

Thirty years ago today I got up somewhere between breakfast and lunch time. I can be reasonably sure that I had three pieces of toast and a Nescafe with two sugars.

I dressed and left the house, walking past The Green, a grassy area where we played football and cricket when I was younger. Past the single tree ringed by posts and chain, that gave you something to lean against at half time. The far edge of The Green banked down to a minor road, a bank to which we ran faster than we were otherwise capable to lay flat and, we hoped, unseen whenever the cricket ball was clogged towards the main road and a likely coming-together with the door panel of a passing car.

A minute further on, past the conker tree growing in the garden of a house that had been empty for as long as I could remember. As long as I could remember back then may well have been three weeks. It was large, detached and one of a few that ran the short distance between the factory and the school opposite my house, a few entirely out of character with the rest of the estate.

The bus stop outside the factory had always been missing a window. The middle one. It gave you somewhere to park an idle arse while rolling a cigarette, hoping that there might be a bus before you ran out of tobacco. In summer, the odds were on your side; the open holiday camp a couple of miles up the road meant more buses ran between home and town. Otherwise you took your chances. The Bus Gods were rarely on your side. Once in a while, I’d pop in on my mum before catching the bus. She worked in the factory as a secretary for maybe 30 years. She’d come to reception and we’d chat for a while, usually just catching up.

Often, I’d walk rather than wait for the bus. Sure enough, at the foot of the hill a few hundred yards on, one would pass you as often as not.

Here at the hill, you had two choices: left took you up past bungalows, along the road where an old lady had once come screaming from her house (assuring me she knew my dad) to admonish me for cycling no-hands, then through a lane and down the main road for the 2.2 miles that the speedometer of my dad’s clapped out Vauxhall told us it took to get to the cinema, or head up the hill, past a few shops, along the old railway line and into town that way.

I went up the hill. A hill that had seemed impossibly steep when I had my first bike, a hill I took weeks to drum up the courage to come down without brakes. Up and past the road where one of the teachers lived – thankfully not the one I’d accidentally called ‘dad’ in front of everyone in class.

On the corner, the tiny newsagents, Charlie’s. I’d scared my parents half to death by walking this far alone as a three year old, before a neighbour saw me and walked me back. It was the sort of shop that didn’t have a name plate above it; everyone just knew it as Charlie’s. Every day, my dad stopped the car here for his cigarettes and The Sun. You had to stand outside if two people were in there, it was that small. As a kid, there was no umming or ahhing over whether it was to be a Nutty or a Star Bar; you chose sharpish to allow someone else in.

Onward, over the junction and a filthy look thrown in through the window of the larger newsagents, towards the proprieter who three years earlier had loudly sacked me for a reason he wouldn’t make clear (“YOU KNOW WHY”) when I was covering for a friend who was away over Christmas. It had been a cold December of dark dark mornings, one of which brought the pre-dawn news that ‘a Beatle has been shot’. For some reason, we all assumed it was Lennon.

Over the main road and past the layby where, if I was feeling lazy or running late on the way back from school, I’d wait for my dad to pick me up on his way home from work. 4.37, give or take, he’d be there. Back in the day when people finished at that time of the day.

Opposite the layby, a rough track cut deep through a sea of housing, the line of the old railway that Beeching closed in the 60s. I had run through this cut a few years before, chased by an older kid with hair like Hitler who had taken the shout of ‘get him’ from a friend who I’d dead-armed and outrun rather too seriously. I’d hot-throatedly outrun him too, but then spent most of the next school year warily keeping an eye out for him, imagining that he’d waste no time in to doling out whatever he felt ‘get him’ deserved.

Down into the cut for half a mile or so until passing under the bridge, where someone had thoughtfully sprayed a message indicating that this was indeed the spot where a friend had apparently become ‘over-excited’ in his trousers while engaged in snogging.

Along the top of the golf course, where another friend had once taken a golf ball on the temple on the way to school, leaving him with a hugely impressive cut and rainbow bruising. The same golf course where my dad, uncle and I would once in a while play pitch and putt, me lofting the ball skywards while my dad skimmed the thing irritatingly through fallen branches and puddles to within a few feet of the hole. The golf course where a friend, on his own at night, a few scoops to the good and dressed in full Mod regalia, had given the come-on to a group of Teds, with predictable results.

The trainline ended adruptly at a main road.

If I’d worked at the weekend, I’d take a sharp left turn and up the hill a few yards and into a labyrinth of backpaths that spat you out near the police station to cut across the car park – always with the thought that someone in uniform would take you to task for shortcutting across police land – down the narrow road to the pub, where you could usually be assured that there’d be someone likewise not studying hard, to play pool with. One, maybe two pints and a few frames, before heading into school, not necessarily for a lecture, but certainly to catch up with friends.

If I hadn’t worked at the weekend, I turned right at the end of the trainline and into school, beerless. Three years it took me to get an E and an O at A level. Still, it was this miserable E and O, combined with several years of idleness to follow that apparently afforded me the status of ‘Mature Student’ and with it the passport to get on to a degree course.

By mid afternoon, almost unfailingly, we had walked into town either from the pub or school, to a tea room. Sometimes the one below the barbers where a couple of months earlier I had taken a tiny photo of Ian McCullough from Echo and the Bunnymen, cut from a magazine, asking him to cut it like that. I must’ve held the picture upside down.

More often, it was to the top of what passed for a department store in the town. A friend’s mum occasionally worked on the ground floor. If she was in, one of us would distract her with a ‘hello’ while he slid past and up the stairs. This, the department store where my dad had bought us both duvets, a move from blankets and sheets that was so unfathomably glamorous then that’s it’s hard to do it justice now. Upstairs, a clutch of idlers warming ourselves around a pot of tea, repeatedly returning to the counter for a pot of hot water to revitalise the tired teabags.

Today, as with all days in town, involved the record shop. This is what dinner money was for. If I bought something, I walked home; if not, I’d take the bus.

Thirty years ago today, I walked home: a 12″ single into the plastic bag, then turned upside down into another, doublebagged against the rain.

I took the other route home, past three houses that I then wasn’t to know would be my home in years to come. Past the underwear shop, through whose window many of the towns young had first become familiar with the seemingly neverending mysteries that in some fantasy future might reveal themselves. Up the hill, past the wall painted large with CREAM BY POST which made us snigger every time. Opposite, the sports and games shop, a place of magic where I’d bought my first table tennis bat, playing 4 nights a week as a 10 year old.

The shops eventually thinned out by what had long been a solicitors, but for years before and for decades to come would still be known as ‘the old post office’. The solicitors where 17 years later I would pick up a handful of papers from my father’s solicitor and shake his hand for the last time.

Onward, slightly uphill, past the dentist named Dr Skidmore, funny on all but appointment day, and the place where I hunted without luck every time for evidence in the lines beneath that Laughter Is The Best Medicine.

A minute more, and past the Catholic church where for a year or two when I was 9 or so my dad would drag me on random Sundays. The prickly, hot dread of being seen by friends. In one of those papers I picked up from the solicitors, my dad had left instructions not (as expected) to be buried at the Catholic church but in the Church of England one on the edge of town as ‘it had the best view’. I had half a mind to have him buried at the Catholic one to settle the score.

Five minutes more took me to the corner opposite the sports club, where a week or two before I’d stood in the darkness, laughing with a couple of friends, one of whose Special Brew intake had unexpectedly made the return journey through his mouth and nose and onto the pavement. In the tiny world of drunkness, we were only vaguely aware of the speeding car approaching until, squealing, it took the corner on two wheels before skating on its roof and into the entrance wall of the sports club.

All that noise instantly to silence with only a tight hiss of exiting steam to break it. We went to help. The driver had freed himself, panicking. I recognised him from years before at primary school. He was trying to run, away from the reality but his legs wouldn’t take him. They weren’t broken but his ankle was damaged and his shins throbbed. We talked at the side of the road, mostly about primary school, the people we still knew and those who were who-knows-where. The police arrived, he was calm. I never saw him again.

Half an hour’s ambling, before cutting in and running the imaginary gauntlet of ‘no-hands’ woman, past the bungalows, the factory, the conker tree, the bus stop, The Green, the tree ringed by posts and chain, and home.

The kettle on, the coffee made, a sodding Blue Riband* to go with it unless, in a rare fit of sanity, my dad had actually done the civilised thing and bought Penguins.

The stereo on, rollie rolled, the single and then one B side followed by the other, at first through speakers and when my dad went to bed through headphones, over and over until I fell sleep.

* The horror of the Blue Riband has left me with a rule for life: never eat a biscuit that floats.

A good while ago when I was in possession of a brain that could remember and even examine and develop sensible, related, inquiring thoughts, I worked as an environmental consultant. Generally, I’m reasonably average at things but I seemed to have some facility at this kind of thing. For once, I’d set aside the pub and worked hard and got a distinction in a Masters in Environmental Planning and Management. Luckily the external examiner of my dissertation was a director of a consultancy I wanted to work for and he offered me a job.

One of the first projects I worked on relates very much to the area about which Owen Paterson, the Environment Secretary, has chosen to speak. Have a look if you fancy.

The gist is simple: Mr Paterson is, in principle, in favour of development on ancient woodland providing that this is offset. He emphasises that this is likely to occur only in cases of ‘major infrastructure’.

The reasons for this being galloping gormlessness are many, but let’s focus on two.

Firstly, the idea that loss of ancient woodland can be offset with new planting.

That project I worked on 16 years ago was concerned with finding a way of evaluating public resources – woodland, heathland, open coast, whatever – so that we might more comprehensively appreciate their value and, when necessary, be able to identify what we needed to replace if any was to be lost.

We came up with a methodology that could be applied nationally, to any development proposal, to help ensure decision making was transparent, to protect the total of our, the public’s, natural, cultural, recreational and historic assets. It was a remarkably simple. That Masters wasn’t really needed, but then no-one gives you a job unless you have a bit of paper telling them you’re supposedly not dim.

Ancient woodlands were the classic example used to explain the idea.

In order to adequately identify what makes an acre of ancient woodland so precious and different to, say, a young acre of coniferous plantation, you have to look at both not in terms of the benefits both provide. If any woodland is to be lost, it should only be lost when compensated for not by a similar area of new plantation but by replacing ALL of the benefits that would be lost.

The process also examined – for each benefit – the scale at which these benefits were important (eg is its biodiversity value of importance national, local, international), along with the comparative uniqueness or rarity or each element, and so on, building up a complete picture of what is valued about the resource and why.

To be able to adequately compensate for the loss of an area of ancient woodland each of these benefits has to be comprehensively supplied by whatever is created to offset it.

Clearly, a non-ancient, monoculture woodland has fewer benefits and is therefore more ‘replaceable’.

Secondly, while the notion of offsetting is appealing and has some uses, in practice it is often highly flawed. The principle is simple and is most commonly applied to carbon, the idea being that if you emit carbon – either by an action (such as flying) or loss of a sink (such as a woodland removal) – this can be compensated for by planting trees in sufficient quantity.

Fine, you’d think, as long as the equation is equal, and this is where things become complicated. For an equation to work, you need to be able to balance out both sides of the sum.

Even offsetting something as relatively uncomplicated as felling an acre of bog standard 20 year old coniferous forestry – where the benefits are likely to include its value as a carbon sink, fuel/wood, some limited biodiversity value (coniferous monocultures tend to have relatively low species diversity), and recreation (if publicly accessible) – is tricky to do accurately, even when considering only the carbon aspect.

It’s not as simple as flattening it and developing, and planting an acre of coniferous plantation elsewhere to offset it. The new plantation is of saplings rather than 20 year old trees so its value as carbon sink value is considerably reduced, creating a huge carbon lag compared with the existing acre. Biodiversity and recreational value will experience a similar lag – where these benefits are lost, before they eventually catch up over decades.

Even if you manage to offset the lag by planting a much increased area, the sum is incomplete unless you take into account the carbon value of the land before it was planted with trees. Open fields – if we assume it is they that will be replanted – have their own carbon value, as well as potential agricultural, recreational and other quality of life benefits. These need to make their way into the equation.

We must also consider time depth: even when dealing with a simple, coniferous monoculture of relatively limited ecological value, for the public to maintain its assets, there have to be guarantees that new plantations will be allowed to mature and that the benefits we get from them are protected in perpetuity. And what of that newly planted woodland: how long will it stand and what happens to the wood when it is harvested?

It sounds complicated – and that is the point: when it comes to our natural, cultural and historic assets, decision making is complicated – what this process does is make sure that however you go about it, the thinking is transparent. And hopefully stops vested interests clouding the truth.

It ensures that essentially irreplaceable resources, such as ancient woodlands, are valued as such, not treated as you might new forestry. It also ensures that where development is to take place, valuable assets that belong to us all are not lost, or that if they are to be lost no-one can pretend that we aren’t losing something precious.

16 years ago this approach was developed using public money, in a cross-agency project funded by the department Owen Paterson finds himself in control of. Perhaps he should look at it again. At the moment, he’s doing a very passable impersonation of someone who either has limited grasp of what his role is or someone who doesn’t care. Neither prospect is overly encouraging.

To accept that ancient woodland can be offset with new planting is to believe that ancient woodland is just a collection of old trees. Such thinking allows us to demolish St Paul’s Cathedral to be offset with a similarly sized pile of new bricks, or to replace our loved one with a random person of similar build who will sit at the other end of the sofa and have sex with us every third Friday.